It was a dinner engagement
accepted out of a sense of "politeness"
the host an old and very strange man
living now in his room, his tiny realm
downtown in the "Squalor Hotel"
A warm water soup meal was served in stained yellow plastic dishes
and the kitchen windows were framed by terrible pink plastic curtains,
curtains that filtered the late afternoon light and bent it into
distortions of artificial pink-orange
and when the wind blew
the too-warm light flickered across the checkerboard linoleum
on the kitchen floor
And I wondered when, in that strained unpleasant silence,
words would bring relief.
And then the Bitter Man
finished his soup supper and went to the cupboard
he took down a thick leather case
and he showed the poet something
something terrible.
The open case revealed
the old mans collection of poisonous flying insects
large and hideous
lethal Amazonian insects
pinned and preserved in frozen deathform on the hobby board within the case.
And the Bitter Man explained:
"On Saturday mornings I go to the park to frighten the schoolchildren.
I open my box and let them see, let them see what is inside,
and then I say "See.....seee children...Look! Life is not all cartoons
and Christmas. Life is cruel...quite cruel. Behold! Behold my collection.
The only one of its kind! My collection of lethal flying insects....
look and see
see the awful shape
the black form
the form that nature has given to these creatures
creatures created to spread only pain, pain and death."
And suddenly the Bitter Man stopped himself
and he stood there in his kitchen, perhaps having realized he had
said too much, revealed too much.
He looked at me and then spoke carefully and slowly,
"You uhhh...you think me cruel, cruel no doubt. Yes! I see it in
your eyes.... and I don’t...don’t blame you. However, consider this:
children...all children are foolish
they need...preparation. They must learn...must learn about..."life."
And then his voice rose, and I could see his frail body begin to shake.
And he went on;
"And "life"....."life" my young-idiot soup-sipper....
"life" I tell you,
is hard and cruel, evil, black, vile and deceitful.
"Life....." the Bitter Man screamed in a dry rasping roar;
"Life!" the word exploded
a tearing wrench of strained flesh sound
from the throat of the old man.
And he kept on screaming the word; "Life....Life"....
The word was a dry wind
A terrible bomb
and it bounced from the awful plastic curtains
rebounding off the faded grim rose wallpaper
and he went on and on
and I thought that soon the manager, or the police would arrive
any minute
and break the door down.
Then the Bitter Man pointed at me with his long fishskin finger.
"Cruel eh?"
"Cruel? No...no...it is not cruel to show the children one of the
many macabre forms, some of the myriad of infinite shapes that Evil takes.
I show them, I show and they see...see these hideous monstrosities of
the jungle night...the perfect black designs of death....I show them
so that they might be shocked. Shocked for one unforgettable moment....
shocked away from the false warmth of the terrible electronic fantasy
dreams...dreams that fill them...fill them with nothing...only
..only dangerous nonsense...dreams that make them candidates for the
supreme and terrible fate...the fate they must meet when they enter
the "real world"...the world of men and money. They must see that "life"
...a torture chamber of unlimited rooms...for the children, for the ones, who did not, or would not take the time
to see what I have shown
right here....in my collection of the "macabre"
in my "Box of Death".
"And so you see" said the Bitter Man, "you see how ironic it is....
as so often happens here...here on the grim earth...the opposite,
the reverse of "what-seems-to-be" the opposite of what we think...
that is where the truth is. I mean, the truth is ...I..I who love children,
and who love people...I have acquired the reputation, and even the appearance
of a "nasty man"..a man who hates, who enjoys darkness, when in fact,
if you are able..able at all to hear what I have just said, and if you
have heard...you must see...(mustn’t you?) You must see the truth....
the real truth of it....?"
The Bitter Man suddenly sighed deeply and sank, mid sentence, onto
the hard plastic chair by the table. He muttered for a moment to himself,
"I mean, you must see, mustn't you....that I am not a ...
not a bad man?"
And then I looked at the Bitter Man, now silent and exhausted
hunched with his head in his hands in the chair by the kitchen table
and I looked
and I saw the remains of the tomato soup
still ringing the plastic bowls
and I looked at my untouched glass of warm tap water
which now had acquired a tiny dead gnat floating near the surface
and I rose up and walked to the window
and opened the pink plastic curtains
outside the afternoon had grown late
suddenly late
and below in the street it was downtown rush hour
and the cars and buses were moving
For a moment they seemed to be
strange metal shelled insects without feeling
And across the street there was a large illuminated billboard with the
huge body of a tanned and nearly naked female
and I saw the glass of milk she was holding
and I read the words "Milk Builds Strong Bodies"
And i heard the Bitter Man at the table behind me
sobbing to himself
I took a deep breath and felt the sea air mixed with exhaust.
The square and right angles of the buildings were cold and suddenly
forbidding, forbidding and ugly
but I looked at the sky to the west
and I knew
the sun would grow brighter and wider and would seem to expand as it
touched down behind the rim of the blue cold ocean
and although we were too far away to see the water
I knew it was there
and I knew that the clouds out there beyond the beach were moving,
moving with the earth, moving with everything that lives and breathes,
and above the tops of the buildings I could see the clouds
reflecting the light,the light of the sinking sun, the afternoon,
the water
and the light that they held was a beautiful light
It was not like the too-warm light filtered thru the plastic kitchen
curtains
and
and that made me happy
very happy.
Written by:
Larry "Buzz" Blackburn
©1988